SOFT LAW: AN INNOVATIVE NON GOVERNMENTAL TOOL

Law is hard but it is the law. Otherwise, the law will be a mere opinion that would not be able to ensure us that our mutual obligations will be maintained. Nevertheless, hard law has been challenged in the last thirty years. Hard law has been discussed in international affairs due to the lack of a supranational government enabled to implement international laws. More recently, hard law was criticized in private law for being too slow to give fair and quick answers to current societal issues. Soft law is not just a pre, a para or a post hard law; it is an innovative non governmental tool which is more and more used in the field of bioethics and business ethics. As an applied legal ethics of deliberation, soft law consents to have a better auto-regulation of all social stakeholders without waiting for late and rigid governmental normative decisions to the legal questions of our time.